Swarm and Cutout Resources

This page is information and resources for swarms and cutouts. Here you will find definitions of a swarm and of a cutout, and you will find a list of people that do one or the other, or both.

SWARM – A swarm is normally seen when a hive has become too crowded and so the current queen and half of the hive will leave the current hive and go off on a search for a hive of their own. Most of the time a Swarm is found on a tree, or fence, or side of a house, or really almost anywhere, including spread out on a driveway or yard if that is where they land. They are normally VERY docile in this state as they have no hive, brood (babies), or honey stores to protect. They do however look a little scary as there is a lot of bees balled up and usually a lot of scouts flying around looking for their new home. Any given beekeeper may or may not charge for a swarm removal, but all of them prefer pictures of the swarm if possible to confirm it is actually a swarm of bees and not something else.

Cutout – A cutout is when one of those swarms has found what it believes to its new home. This can be in the wall of a home, an abandoned refrigerator, an old tire, an attic, a barn, or anywhere else that the bees find a suitable area where they can build comb. A beekeeper often will need to remove material to get to the hive and remove bees and comb from the space. Depending on the space they have moved into, this may entail removing siding from a house, or drywall inside a house, etc. This is a very involved process and takes up a good portion of time on the beekeeper as well and in many cases specialized equipment. Most beekeeper that do cutouts do charge for this service, as it is a service and is not an easy job a vast majority of the time. See the notes below for why you should not just try to kill the bees.

If you call more than one person on this list, TELL THEM SO. Please don’t call several people if someone has agreed to handle a situation. You are wasting people’s time, gas, and money. If you’re shopping for a less expensive cutout, fine, but BE HONEST, tell the beekeeper what you’re doing.

NOTE: Some folks when hearing that beekeepers charge for doing cutouts go back to the standby of, “Well I will just pay someone to come out and kill the bees”. A pest control specialist can indeed come out to your house and exterminate the bees in your house. What they usually do not do is remove the comb, honey, and other materials that are left behind. Honey left in walls after an extermination is no longer protected by the colony. When that happens the honey and wax is not being kept cooled and thus can leave you with honey contaminated with pesticide running down an internal wall, and you often will get things like: Mold, ants, roaches, mice, and other pests that will smell the honey and start infesting the old colony location. You can even have another colony move into that space. Then you will still need to call a beekeeper or someone else familiar with what to do in this situation.

Central Oklahoma Beekeepers Association does not endorse any particular service provider nor do we control their methods and business practices. We provide this information for the general public only as a list of COBA members that do provide these services. COBA does not train beekeepers to perform cutouts.